Attachment - Chapter 3

Caregiver-Infant Interactions

Reciprocity:
- Two people interact, responding to each other's signals and eliciting responses.
- 'Turn taking' is a key characteristic.
- Alert Phases: Babies signal readiness for interaction (e.g., eye contact).
- Feldman and Eidelman found that mothers respond to their baby's alertness about 2/3 of the time, varying with the mother's skill and external factors.
- Frequency increases around 3 months as they pay attention to facial expressions and verbal signals (Feldman, 2007).
- Active Involvement: Babies and caregivers initiate interactions and take turns.
Interactional Synchrony:
- Caregiver and baby reflect each other's actions and emotions in a coordinated way.
- Synchrony Begins: Meltzoff and Moore's study:
  - Adults displayed 1 of 3 facial expressions or 1 of 3 gestures.
  - Babies as young as 2 weeks mirrored these expressions/gestures.
- Importance for Attachment: Isabella et al. found that high synchrony levels were associated with better mother-baby attachment.

Evaluating Caregiver-Infant Interactions

High Validity and Reliability:
- Filmed observations in controlled environments to control extraneous variables.
- Film allows for inter-rater reliability and re-analysis by psychologists.
- Babies aren't aware of being observed, preventing demand characteristics.
Practical Applications:
- Crotwell et al. found that Parent-Child Interaction Therapy improved interactional synchrony in low-income mothers and their children.
- Knowledge of caregiver-infant interactions can improve parent-child relationships and baby development.
Babies are Difficult to Observe:
- Infants lack coordinated movements and test facial expressions independently.
- Difficult to distinguish between general behaviors and specific responses to adults.
- Uncertainty in findings.
Potential Lack of Developmental Importance:
- Feldman: synchrony and reciprocity may simply describe observable behavior patterns.
- Doesn't necessarily equate to understanding child development nor tell the purpose of these behaviours.
- (Counterpoint - Isabella et al.)

Schaffer's Stages of Attachment

Stage 1: Asocial Stage:
- 0-2 months old
- Similar behavior towards humans and inanimate objects.
- Preference for familiar people and are more easily comforted.
- Beginnings of bond formation.
Stage 2: Indiscriminate Attachment:
- 2-7 months old
- Infants become more social, showing clear preference for humans.
- Babies recognize caregivers and familiar people.
- No separation anxiety or stranger anxiety.
Stage 3: Specific Attachment:
- From 7 months old
- Stranger anxiety and separation anxiety.
- Baby has formed a specific attachment to primary attachment figure (often the mother, 65% of the time).
Stage 4: Multiple Attachment:
- From 1 year
- Babies form secondary attachments with people they spend time with.
Schaffer and Emerson Study:
- Aim: To investigate when attachments start and how intense they are.
- Observed 60 Glaswegian infants from working-class families, 5-23 weeks old.
- Visited every 4 weeks for a year, then once at 18 months.
- Mothers recorded the intensity of babies' protesting during separation situations on a 4-point scale (crying, whimpering, holding out hands).

Evaluating Schaffer's Stages of Attachment

Real-World Application:
- Stages can be applied practically to daycare settings.
- Parents can use stages to understand their child's development.
- May avoid starting daycare around seven months (specific attachment phase).
High External Validity:
- Natural observation, not artificial environment, likely to show natural behavior.
- High ecological validity, applicable to real-world settings.
Prone to Demand Characteristics, Low Internal Validity:
- Mothers weren't objective observers.
- Some may be more or less sensitive to child's distress, leading to unreliable data.
Poor Evidence for Asocial Stage:
- Young babies have poor coordination and are largely immobile.
- Anxiety may be expressed subtly, making it difficult for mothers to report attachment behavior.
- Babies may be social in this stage but appear asocial.
- Low Internal Validity.

Animal Studies of Attachment

Animal Studies: Studies carried out on non-human animal species for ethical or practical reasons.
- Practical because animals breed faster.
Imprinting: Bird species mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see.
Lorenz (1952):
- Aim: To investigate imprinting to see if animal infants bond with the first subject they meet.
- Procedure:
  - Divided goose eggs into two groups.
  - One group hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment.
  - Other group hatched in an incubator, with Lorenz as the first moving object.
  - Varied time between birth and seeing the first moving object to investigate the critical period.
- Findings:
  - Incubator group followed Lorenz, control group followed their mother.
  - Even when mixed, groups followed Lorenz or the goose, respectively.
  - Identified a critical period for imprinting, sometimes as brief as a few hours.
  - Without imprinting, chicks don't attach to a mother figure.
  - Sexual Imprinting: Birds that imprinted on humans later showed courtship behavior towards humans.
Harlow (1958):
- Aim: To investigate how newborn rhesus monkeys attached to a cloth as a mother figure.
- Procedure:
  - Lab experiment.
  - Reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model surrogate 'mothers.'
  - One wire monkey dispensed milk, the other a cloth monkey.
  - Recorded time spent with each monkey and their behavior in a fear condition.
- Findings:
  - Monkeys preferred to cuddle the cloth-covered 'mother' and sought comfort when frightened, regardless of which mother dispensed milk.
  - 'Contact comfort' was more important for attachment than food.
  - Maternally deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable later in life.
  - Unsuccessful at mating and bred less.
  - When they became mothers, they neglected and attacked their children.
  - Monkeys reared with only plain wire 'mothers' were most dysfunctional.
- Conclusions:
  - There was a critical period for attachment formation.
  - If a mother figure hadn't been introduced within the monkeys' first 90 days, the damage was irreversible, and forming an attachment was impossible.

Evaluating Animal Studies of Attachment

Lorenz:
- Research to Support: Regolin and Vallortigara: Chicks followed original shape combinations, supporting innate imprinting on the first moving object.
- Research to Contradict: Guitan et al: Chickens imprinted on washing up gloves tried to mate with them, but eventually preferred mating with other chickens.
  - Impact of imprinting on mating behavior may not be permanent.
Harlow:
- Real-World Application: Findings helped understand the risk factors in child development due to a lack of attachment.
  - Helps social workers and psychologists take preventative measures.
  - Also important for animal attachment in zoos and breeding programs.
- Animal Bias, Ungeneralizable to Humans: Rhesus monkeys are more similar to humans than Lorenz's birds.
  - However, the human brain and behavior are more complex than monkeys, so findings may not be relevant to humans.

Ainsworth's Strange Situation (1970)

Aim: To identify and categorize infant attachment to a caregiver.
Procedure:
- Controlled observation to test attachment security.
- Babies are in a lab with a two-way mirror and cameras.
- Multiple behaviors used to judge attachment:
  - Proximity Seeking: Staying close to the caregiver.
  - Exploration and Secure Base Behavior: Using caregiver as a secure base to explore.
  - Stranger Anxiety: Anxiety when strangers approach.
  - Separation Anxiety: Protest at separation from the caregiver.
  - Response to Reunion: Greeting the caregiver with pleasure.
- The procedure has 7 episodes, each lasting 3 minutes.
  - Baby encouraged to explore.
  - Stranger approaches the baby.
  - Caregiver leaves baby and stranger.
  - Caregiver returns and stranger leaves.
  - Caregiver leaves baby alone.
  - Stranger returns.
  - Caregiver returns and is reunited with the baby.
Findings:
- Distinct patterns in babies' behavior, with 3 main types of attachment:
  - Secure Attachment:
    - Desirable attachment type, associated with psychologically healthy outcomes.
    - Moderate stranger and separation anxiety, proximity-seeking, secure base behavior, and ease of comfort at reunion.
    - 60-75% of British babies.
    - Example: The study’s findings help predict babies later development. Babies and toddlers assessed as type B (secure) tend to have better outcomes than others, in later childhood (better achievement in school and less involvement in bullying - McCormick et al) and in adulthood (better mental health - Ward et al.) Suggests A.S.S measures something real and meaningful
  - Insecure-Avoidant Attachment:
    - Low anxiety but weak attachment.
    - Low stranger and separation anxiety, lack of proximity-seeking or secure base behavior, and little response to reunion, maybe even avoidance, of the caregiver.
  - Insecure-Resistant Attachment:
    - High anxiety.
    - Greater proximity-seeking, less exploration, high levels of stranger and separation anxiety, and resistance to being comforted at reunion.

Evaluating Ainsworth's Strange Situation (1970)

High Inter-Rater Reliability:
- Bick et al tested inter-rater reliability for the Strange Situation on a team of trained observers - agreement on attachment type 94% of the time.
- Due to controlled conditions and easily observable behaviors.
- Findings aren't dependent on subjective judgments, increasing internal validity.
Not Necessarily Attachment:
- Kagan et al suggested that genetically influenced anxiety levels may account for variations in attachment behaviour and later development.
- Variations in attachment behavior may be related to genetically influenced anxiety levels.
Culture-Bound Test:
- May not be a valid measure of attachment in different cultural contexts.
- Developed in the UK and US, and babies in different cultures have different experiences.
- Takahashi's study in Japan found high levels of separation anxiety and thus insecure-resistant classification, likely due to rarity of mother-baby separation.

Bowlby's Explanation of Attachment: Monotropy

Bowlby had an evolutionary explanation for attachment.
- Attachment as an innate system that gives a survival advantage by ensuring young animals stay close to adult caregivers, providing safety.
Monotropy:
- Having one particular attachment (primary attachment figure) that is different from all others and of central importance to a child's development.
- Law of Continuity: More constant and predictable childcare leads to better quality attachments.
- Law of Accumulated Separation: The effect of every separation from the mother adds up.
  - 'The safest dose is therefore a zero dose' (Bowlby).
Social Releasers:
- Innate 'cute' behaviors babies are born with (smiling, cooing, gripping) that activate adult social interaction.
- Make an adult attach to the baby.
Attachment is reciprocal, and both mother and baby are hardwired to become attached.
- The interplay between babies and adults, encouraged by social releasers, gradually builds the attachment.
Critical Period:
- The time in which an attachment forms if it is to form at all.
- A child is most sensitive to forming an attachment at 6 months, extending up to 2 years old.
- After this period, it is much more difficult to form attachments.
Internal Working Model:
- Our mental representations of the world, e.g., the representation we have of our relationship to our primary attachment.
- This model affects our future relationships because it holds our perceptions of what relationships are like.
- A child whose first relationship is loving will bring these qualities to future relationships and base their parenting behavior on these qualities (and vice versa).

Evaluating Bowlby's Theory of Monotropy

Research to Support Social Releasers: Brazelton et al found that cute baby behaviours are designed to elicit interaction from caregivers
- When primary attachment figures were instructed to ignore their babies' social releasers, babies became distressed.
- Supports the view that social releasers are important in emotional development and attachment formation.
Research to Support Internal Working Model:
- Heidi Bailey et al: Mothers with poor attachment to their primary attachment figures were more likely to have poorly attached babies.
  - Supports Bowlby's idea that parents' ability to form attachments is influenced by their internal working model (early attachment experiences), and that patterns of attachment are passed down generations.
Contradictory Evidence, Low Int Val:
- Schaffer & Emerson found a significant minority of babies form multiple attachments at the same time.
- Decreased validity & credibility of Bowlby’s theory.
Feminist Concerns:
- The laws of continuity and accumulated separation suggest that mothers who work may negatively affect their child's emotional development.
- Erica Burkman stated that this sets up mothers to take the blame for anything that goes wrong with their child, and gives people an excuse to restrict mothers' activities, e.g., returning to work.